U.N. observers see site of massacre in Syria

by Zeina Karam - Jun. 8, 2012 11:20 PMAssociated Press

BEIRUT, Lebanon - U.N. observers on Friday could still smell the stench of burned corpses and saw body parts scattered around a Syrian farming hamlet where nearly 80 men, women and children were reported slain this week. The scene held evidence of a "horrific crime," a U.N. spokeswoman said.

The observers were finally able to get inside the deserted village of Mazraat al-Qubair after being blocked by government troops and residents and coming under small-arms fire Thursday, a day after the slayings were first reported.

In central Damascus on Friday, rebels brazenly battled government security forces in the heart of the capital for the first time, witnesses said, and explosions echoed for hours. Government artillery repeatedly pounded the central city of Homs, and troops tried to storm it from three sides.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with international envoy Kofi Annan in Washington to discuss how to salvage his faltering plan to end 15 months of bloodshed in Syria. Western nations blame President Bashar Assad for the violent crackdown on anti-government protests that grew out of the Arab Spring.

The U.N. team was the first independent group to arrive in Mazraat al-Qubair, a village of about 160 people in central Hama province. Opposition activists and Syrian government officials blamed each other for the killings and differed about the number of dead.

Activists said that up to 78 people, including women and children, were shot, hacked and burned to death, saying pro-government militiamen known as "shabiha" were responsible. A government statement on the state-run news agency SANA said "an armed terrorist group" killed nine women and children before Hama authorities were called and killed the attackers.

Sausan Ghosheh, spokeswoman for the U.N. observers, said residents' accounts of the mass killing were "conflicting," and that they needed to cross-check the names of the missing and dead with those supplied by villagers. Mazraat al-Qubair itself was "empty of the local inhabitants," she said.

"You can smell the burnt smell of the dead bodies," Ghosheh said. "You could also see body parts in and around the village."

Ghosheh said she saw two homes damaged by shells and bullets. She spoke of burned bodies found in a house but did not elaborate and was not clear whether the U.N. team saw them.

She told the British Broadcasting Corp.: "We can say that there was definitely a horrific crime that was committed. The scale is still not clear to me."

The United States condemned Assad over the killings, saying he has "doubled down on his brutality and duplicity."

Before her meeting with Annan, Clinton said they would look at "how to engender greater response by the government of Syria to the six-point plan that he has put forth."

Annan's plan calls for an end to violence followed by a political transition. Although Assad agreed to it, the violence has continued unabated.

Annan allowed that some people "say the plan is definitely dead." He asked rhetorically whether the problem is the plan or its implementation.

"If it's implementation, how do we get action on that? And if it's the plan, what other options do we have?" he asked.

U.N. diplomats say Annan is proposing that world powers and key regional players, including Iran, come up with a new strategy to end the conflict.